Monday, October 31, 2005

Well, I got lots more done today but I have no photo documentation to go along with it. we had a light day in clinic so I was able to leave around 1:30 pm today. I came back to my current townhome for about an hour, got the mail, had lunch and such. I got over to the new house about 2:30. It was just me today with my stereo. No TV or computer to distract me, so I got a lot done. I finished all the edging with primer in the living room after bringing in two big lamps to light the room. I checked on the guest bedroom from yesterday, pulled off all the tape, and have a few touch up spots near where we finished up since we ran out of paint. I'll have to get to Menard's for a half gallon of it to touch up. I picked up everything on the floor so tomorrow night Tim, Brian, and I can stack stuff in there. I taped off the rest of the master bedroom and shook up the can of paint the previous owner had left for the room. I got the two walls she had left plus all the edging in that room done. Left the floors clean so that room is stackable as well. I called and reserved a moving van for Saturday too. Since we lost yesterday due to the rain, I decided to get a big van that we can get a lot of stuff into in one trip. that way it should go faster due to less driving back and forth. The last big paint task will be the actual color in the living room. I will have the bathroom and the office but they can sort of be done anything. So now I need supper and a shower. So much for halloween. Better than how I spent it two years ago (in the ER with a panic attack after my ex husband finalized our divorce and sent me an email about it!). No little munchkins for me so I'm a little bummed about that but I just don't have the time this year. Happy Halloween!

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Even with the extra hour of sleep last night, I'm exhausted. Last night my boyfriend took me to dinner and we were both so tired from either house prepping or ultimate frisbee that we were in bed by 9. I slept in this morning until about 8:30 and then was back to house by noon to start working on things. The above was the last picture of the day, my friend Paul spent the day helping me and after I had leaned into the wall in the guest bedroom he thought it looked like I had crapped my pants so he thought this was a good photo op! That was pretty much the only big paint oops of the day though.

This little strip was just us testing the color over the primer see if we needed to think about doing a second coat of primer or not. In this picture it looks pretty pink but in actuality it is a grayish lavendar color. Above and below is the primer coat over the nasty brown sponge that you saw in yesterday's pictures. Just the white primer made the room look so much better. Tim had taken the mirror above the fireplace down yesterday and today Paul suggested I get a second mirror and put inside the bricked off fireplace. I plan to fill the area with a bunch of different sized candle pillars and the reflection off the mirror should look pretty cool. And the size of that mirror will be 31" by 28", just so Paul knows I remembered what we measured since I didn't write it down.

These last pictures are the hardest task of the whole day. i had to scrub with hot water to get all the DIFF off along with the left over adhesive. My knees were killing me but I got that done while Paul taped the crown molding that Tim and I didn't get too yesterday when we ran out of tape.

Some final taping before we started painting.

Paul was super good at the cornering bit so I tackled the wide open areas and up to the taping edges while he cut in with a sponge brush. He hated the color but I loved the way it turned out. The room feels so warm. It still looks a bit splotchy because the paint wasn't completely dry yet. We had to do a little begging and praying to finish the room as we nearly ran out of paint. But we did it! The guest bedroom is completely painted. just need to pull off the tape. The crown molding, base boards and doors were originally finished wood but have been painted over several times. I would like to eventually strip them back to wood. I think they would look good that way with the warm caramel color. That will have to come in time.

The last project of the day was to fix this. The shower spout comes out of the wall at just about the top of my head. Even with that weird flexible hose I couldn't get it up high enough to make a shower comfortable for me, let alone my boyfriend. Reminded me of a Super 8 shower.

The old shower hose came off really easy and Paul had to crank pretty hard to get the attachment to point the right direction but we got it and the new shower head on so that most anyone can take a shower with the water at a comfortable height. Plus the new head is a massaging dial with different settings. So that's what we accomplished today. Included two trips to Menard's, lunch at 4 pm at Culver's, sore feet, lots of paint fumes. Now I'm going to shower and call it a night. I was going to move a lot of stuff today but it was pouring rain. At least we were productive indoors.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

I took possession last night and this morning at 10 am my friend Tim and I headed over to the new house to start prepping it for paint. The old owner was still there...cleaning and moving stuff out yet. Oh well, she wasn't in the way so we got started. It is now 4:30 and I'm out of tape, need to make another run to Menard's and then I will go back and at least get the living room started with primer. This is the living room. It is currently sponged that brown color over a yellow. The previous paint job was not done well so even though we have everything taped off and even I will be doing a lot of cutting in with white on the crown molding and the baseboards. Oh well. That is what owning a home is about right? Having little projects to do here and there. This is one room in the house that I'm not doing anything with. This is the dining room and I like the sage green and the stripes. The little nook is an old shelf for the phone. There are three of them through the whole house. Just one more thing to add to the character of the place.

This room needs lots of work. It is the guest bedroom and as you can see it was made up for a little boy, complete with a wallpaper border. Below is the start of the prep work in it. I sprayed the whole border with DIFF, let it sit for a while and took my stripper to it. As you can see in the pictures it came off pretty slick. Now all I have to do is wipe the walls down with a wet rag and start painting. There are more pictures to come. The master bedroom is half painted. She has left me the remaining paint to finish the room. That shouldn't take too long. For now, i'm off to Menard's for spackle, a putty knife, and more tape. If I can get the living room painted tonight, I will be happy. I am going to have to do primer and paint so wish me luck.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

How did it get to be 18 hours from when I will be signing the papers on my very first home!? I did my final walk through of the house after work today, picked up a few rugs for place at TJ Maxx and Target and now am packing more stuff. I take property of the house tomorrow afternoon. Yippeee! My stomach is full of butterflies, my current place is full of boxes, my cats have this scared look on their furry faces. I'm so excited! Time to keep packing. Maybe once I'm settled I will have time to join back in with HNT!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I wouldn't consider myself an insomniac. I wouldn't consider myself a good sleeper either. I'm not restless, I can usually just fold the covers over when i get up in the morning. I just find sleep frustrating. There are times when I find sleep completely overrated and look at it with a "why bother" attitude. Like tonight, it's 9:30 pm, I'm finally home for the night after going to a local football playoff game to cover for the sports medicien department, I'm almost warm again and I need to start packing. So, sleep would be nice, would love to crawl into bed now and call it a night but I have to get this packing done. So, what the fuck, might as well just stay awake right?There are other times where sleep is precious. Like this past Sunday afternoon when I curled up on the boyfriend's couch with a pillow and a blanket after getting very little sleep on Saturday night while tossing and turning on a hotel room floor while my mom snored up a storm. I was out cold from about 2.5 hours on his couch. It was great. Great until a bad dream woke me up in a cold sweat. I was so so tired after all the driving and the little sleep from the night before. That precious sleep ended with a rude awakening that had me unsettled the rest of the night. Worried even about going back to sleep at bedtime. So many nights I go to bed feeling completely exhausted. I work long days in a demanding job. Patients can drain you. My typical bed time routine is always the same. "They" say it is healthy to have a routine at bedtime. This time of year my routine is something hot to drink about an hour before bed. I have flannel sheets, I put a heating pad on a little while before I got to bed or while I'm getting ready for bed. I crawl in and read for pleasure every night before bed to turn my brain off from work stuff. Some nights I read one or two paragraphs and am out cold. Other nights I read one or two chapters and call it a night. I fall asleep without any problem. The problem comes about three to four hours later when I just start waking up. I don't have to pee, I'm not dreaming anything bad, I just wake up. I look at the clock, fall back asleep. I will do that through my alarm. The instant my alarm goes off I'm back into a deep pleasurable sleep. I crawl out tired.Other nights it is the dreams that make sleep frustrating. I have always been a vivid dreamer. Good or bad dreams, I remember them well. I am also the type that will awaken from a dream be confused of where I am, etc. The dreams lately have at least slowed down a bit. For a good portion of this summer work related dreams and problems with Dr T dominated. Now it is dreams full of a lack of self-confidence in both myself and in my relationship with the boyfriend. The ex getting married has upset me more than I'm letting my conscious brain admit I think. I'm terrified of going through that same sort of pain in any way ever again. There are days where all I want to do is sleep. Take a regular Saturday afternoon, I can curl up in bed and sleep for hours. out cold to the entire world. Last fall when my sleep was so bad, I actually scheduled an appt with my doctor. her answer, to me, another health care provider, was that "it's a habit", "get over it". Well, I haven't gotten over it. I hate taking sleeping pills. i have done it. In fact, on Sunday night I took one along with my bubble bath and hot apple cider and I slept for 10 hours. Hard. But I don't feel truly rested when I do it that way. I used them from the day after my ex left me until I took my boards and quit using them. I used them about a year ago when things at work were very very bad and I was getting no sleep at all. I quit on my own. I have also taken anti-depressants, I'm not sure if I'm there to the point of needing them again. I don't want to. I want to be confident again, feel secure in my relationships with people that mean a lot to me and trust in those relationships, I want to sleep at night and be rested. Sleep is frustrating!

Sunday, October 23, 2005

it's cold! I am home from the wedding and I'm freezing! It's warmer here in Rochester than it was in South Dakota this weekend but it is still cold. Brrr!I drove 336 miles one way yesterday and back today to attend the wedding of a young man whose dad has been coming hunting at my parent's place for over 25 years. The entire group of guys that have been hunting on my parent's place for what will be 30 years this November were all there with their kids and grandkids. My mom was so happy. She got to visit with all of them and they all treat her like a queen. She got all sorts of hugs and they waited on her hand and foot. All the kids that are my age and my sister's age caught up, danced, laughed, drank., we had a great time. The kids of the kids were even cuter. I blew bubbles for the twins, danced with the kids. Took us all 45 minutes to leave because everyone had to hug everyone. It was worth the 336 one way drive.

What wasn't worth the drive was the weather I drove into. The first 225 miles of the trip were fine. Sun shining but it was about 50 degrees. I got to the MN/SD border and it was WINTER. First snow flakes were floating in the air right around Sioux Falls. Made the transition to I-29 and the sun was shining. Got 30 miles north of Sioux Falls and literally drove into a black wall. There was 1.5 inch ice blobs pelting my windshielf with huge snow flakes thick enough to make it hard to see. Drove through that for 15-20 miles. Then the sun was shining, then snow again. Got to Watertown for the wedding, it was about 38-40 degrees. Half way through the wedding more big fat snow, had ice rain during the reception that froze the doors on the car, hotel room heater only blew out cold air. BRRR!! I usually get very very excited about the first snow of the season. But that is when the first snow comes when I'm at home, can turn on a movie, curl up with the boy and the cats, a blanket and cocoa. I called the boy to let him know it was snowing so he can think about getting the fancy tires off the truck since it probably will be snowing in Rochester by the end of this week. Crazy...just in time for me to move :)Happy snowfall everyone! I'm going to bed in my flannel jammies after a nice hot bath!

Friday, October 21, 2005

The move is only a week away. one week from now I will own my very first home. Wow...i put off getting attached to the place early on but now I can't wait to move it. The place has so much character. Now, my current rented townhome looks like box city. The living room only has large unboxable things left in it, the entertainment center is bare, the dining room full of boxes. Poor cats don't know what is going on. Tomorrow I head to SD for a wedding and plan to come back early on Sunday and get right back into packing. Here is a few pictures of the current mess. The office upstairs has lots too but I haven't gotten to pictures up there yet. Happy weekend!

Sunday, October 16, 2005

I just signed a check for $62.50 which will officially close my account with the wonderful lady that got me through the 3 months immediately after my divorce. Two and a half years have gone by since that night that I started dialing counselor after counselor to get in immediately as I was having a mental melt down and could hardly blubber what had happened. I knew Laurie from Carroll College where she once worked as a counselor in the student health center. Since my graduation she had moved into private practice but I felt comfortable with her. For the first two weeks I spent 1-2 hours A DAY, EVERY day in her office. With her patient eyes, soft voice and pure kindness she guided me through the most painful experience of my life. I can honestly say without her and my two best friends I would not be on this earth today.At the time I was seeing here I had health insurance that my parents paid the premium on for me because I was still in school. That plan covered 80% of my bill. That left me with the remaining 20%, which totaled around $780 by the time was was done! I have been making little montly payments on it for two years. I just wrote that LAST check! One more line of debt scratched off my little list. I feel a little lighter in my step now. Funny that I should pay off that long stretch of counseling the same week I find out the ex has remarried. Too bad I can't go curl up in the rocker in her office and let her talk me through it :)

Wow! I don't know how many times I exclaimed "wow" during the show last night but if you ever get a chance to go see Cirque du Soleil's Corteo, GO! Sort of last minute this week I decided to check to see if there were tickets still available as the company had extended it's showing in Minneapolis for two more weeks. The boyfriend and I are both home this weekend and didn't have anything to keep us home so I called on Friday and ended up with tickets 9 rows from the front.

It was a great performance, a beautiful (albeit slightly chilly) fall evening. Most of the spoken or sung portions of the show were in Italian but you could follow the story. A clown is watching his own funeral procession. The show is a mixture of comedy, acrobatics, dance and song. As an orthopedist I believe I have a firm grasp on how the human body should work...these athletes defy the "should" of human anatomy. There were trapeze, bars, tightropes, jugglers, artistic gymnasts with ribbons/balls/hoops, and lots of dancing and hanging from various things high up.

Now I get to spend the rest of today packing more and more boxes. I got a good portion of the living room done yesterday morning. I move in TWO WEEKS! Where did the time go? Oh, well. Hope you all are having a great weekend and enjoying some great fall weather wherever you are at. Have a great week everyone!

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Okay, I feel a bit like I'm drowning right now and it is getting harder to breathe. I just found out that on the 1st my ex-husband got married. Now, i know most of you will say that I shouldn't care but it still hurts. I have been preparing myself for this for a long time. About 8 months or so ago I found out he was going to get married and then about 6 weeks before the wedding in July it all fell apart and we all thought he was finally getting his life together again. He came home to see his family, moved out of her house, supposedly finally was seeing the light. He also got a lot more "nice" to me, trying to "patch" the hurt he caused. Not to get back together but to finally say I'm sorry for what he did to me. I'm not going into details but it was pretty much the darkest time of my life. Anyway, when i was home in August his former best friend said he thought he had heard that they might be trying to get back together. Well, guess they did. I am chatting online with his little sister right now and she just told me. I feel sort of fuzzy, like I should be crying but nothing will come out, and my tummy is in knots. The biggest thing is that way back the first time I thought he was getting re-married I started filling out annulment paperwork. He could care less if he gets married again in the catholic church and obviously didn't because since it kept being "on again, off again"I never finished the paperwork. i want to get married again someday, I'm no where near ready right now but it is so painful to sit down and describe the things that were wrong in a marriage you thought you were going to be in forever. I truly was happy married and don't regret any of the time I had with him. But now, all the pain is brought back up again.As soon as I'm done chatting I'm going to call my best friend Heather. It is times like this when I really really wish my MT friends like Heather, Os, Kamey, Nikki and Ryan, Megs and the rest of the gang was around. I could use a hug. I loved this man once and he can just go on not caring and do whatever he wants with his life and I'm stuck dealing with the consequences, like going through this annulment thing alone and reliving the pain. Now I get the pleasure of filling in his name with a new wife on that paperwork too. Just one more thing on my plate, good thing I'm not sleeping well anyway. Breath, in, out, breath, in, out. no tears but lots of ache.

Monday, October 10, 2005

I got a great surprise at work today. First off, nothing like a week off of work to make one feel mucho appreciated. My chief resident practically hugged me, my desk staff did hug me, and my secretary made me muffins for my birthday. That was all fine and great but I was so discombobulated from being gone for a week I didn't really have time to appreciate it all. But then I got a phone call from my cast room nurse who spent the weekend shooting prairie dogs at my mom and dad's place in South Dakota. (600 miles from here) He said he had something for me. I met him upstairs and he had a cake from my mom!most of you know that my mom is pretty sick. she has late stage ovarian cancer and is making an attempt at a third round of chemo but has failed two options in the last two months. anyway, she's tired, sick, whatever. But she made me a cake! It was a chocolate sheet cake with white frosting and caramel hershey kisses on it. I had a piece with lunch and then shared the rest with my residents. They are poor starving docs that don't get homemade anything very often so I shared. I also brought a couple pieces home though and I just had a big hunk of it with vanilla bean ice cream. Oh my! So yummy.

So that was the highlight of my day. A homemade chocolate cake from my mom. Now that I have that warm fuzzy in my head I'm going to call it a night. Night night!

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Well, I'm a year older now. As Os has pointed out, yesterday was my birthday. In the grand scheme of birthdays, there was definitely no bells and whistles such with this one. In fact, I think the word disappointment sums it up best. I have always thought of birthdays as special. This one just didn't feel that way at all.I spent the entire morning in a darkened conference room being lectured at, then walked in the rain to lunch with my supervisor from work who was at the conference with me. I at least treated myself to a nice lunch (actually the clinic treated me to a nice lunch as they will be getting the receipt). I had crab cakes and then a wonderful brownie sundae. I then spent 2.5 hours sitting in the airport waiting for my flight. Then a three hour flight in a horribly small plane with some college freshman sitting behind me, I can tell you about anything you might want to know about her because she blabbed quite loudly the entire time! Had a substandard salad with a cheap glass of wine in the airport.Thank God for my boyfriend...he picked me up at the airport. Had a special CD he made for me playing in the truck. 10 songs, each from a different musical genre. The best part...he subjected himself to a country song and a bluegrass song just for me! He also got me a really cool atomic clock for my new house that is completely idiot proof and will tell me the weather, the time, and the moon phase. It's pretty swift. He then gave me an iPod shuffle and even had taken the time to download the cd he made me onto it. We crashed hardcore around 1:30, exhaused from work and travel. It was cold here, in the low 30's, I slept so hard but had to be up at 6 to head to the church for my retreat.

Tonight we are just going to Outback for dinner, I ate seafood all week, a nice red steak sounded good and then to blockbuster for a movie. Grammy sent me flowers, got a care package from my best friend with new moose-stuffin's, Os woke me up yesterday, sister wished be happy birthday only after I called home to tell the family I made it home safe. I know it wasn't a BAD birthday, it just didn't feel like a birthday. Nothing special, felt sort of "ick" all day due to rain and then plane. Oh well! I'm 28 now. maybe when I'm 30 I will have my shit together.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Due to significant difficulties with the hotel internet service...like I have had intermittant access since check-in on Sunday. I have not posted for either HNT or Boobie-thon! Double ugh! I'll see if I can come up with something late tonight maybe but for now I have to run to the conference banquet!

Saturday, October 01, 2005

I'm trying to get a lot of things done today so that I can leave here tomorrow morning. Where does time go? It's 4:30 on Saturday and I haven't even started packing other than to get my suitcase out of the closet. Of course, we are planning to go Ocktoberfest in Lacrosse tonight so I have to get it all done tonight, plus get all "girled" up to go out. no way I will make time to pack in the morning, I'm going from bed, to car, to plane, to sleep. I am attending the annual meeting of PA's in Orthopedic Surgery in Norfolk, Virginia. It's a week long conference. My department supervisor will also be there, which is nice. Other than when I went to the national PA conference in Vegas right after graduating, I'm use to going to conferences alone and not knowing anyone. This will help, at least there will be someone to introduce me to other people and grab dinner with. I hope to get some time to wander around the Naval Base and such. Going to do a dinner cruise on Wednesday night too. I love work trips. I am also going to sleep in everyday to 7 am! The only down side to this trip is the return date. Friday is my 28th birthday. The conference gets done around 11:30 that morning. I figured I could get an early afternoon flight and be home before the sun goes down to spend the day celebrating. With all the Northwest Airline issues and cutbacks I have to take a 5:30 departure with a 10:30 pm arrival. At least the boyfriend will be around to pick me up. Oh, well...I spent last year's birthday flying to a conference. I checked into my hotel room around 11:30 pm and ordered a piece of chocolate cake to my room to celebrate while I chatted on the phone with Os.This has been a long week and today hasn't been much better. I feel really drained for some odd reason. Can't seem to get my mojo flowing. Wednesday night after volleyball (we won, boosted our record to 12-0) I came home and took the bubble bath that you saw in HNT because I was simply too tired to stand for a shower. I was in bed and asleep by about 9:30 pm. Thursday was even worse. We were on call at work so I was there at 6:45 am and stayed until 7:15 pm. I got home, warmed up left overs from Macaroni Grill and at 8:45 my eyes were watering from struggling to stay awake. I went to bed and was asleep by 9 o'clock. Didn't even hear the phone ring when my friend Heather called me. Slept straight through till my alarm went off at 5:45 am.

Last night was fun. It was homecoming at the high school that I cover for sports med. It was a pretty uneventful game. 33-0, no real big injuries. Some dehydration, a dancer who subluxed her knee cap but danced anyway. Afterwards the boyfriend and I went to see Oliver Twist. Don't recommend this version...very dark. Much prefer the musical rendition of the story instead. I got up early this morning in spite of not getting to sleep until 1 am. Had to finish my outline for the retreat I'm planning. Got that done, went to that meeting. Got home and crashed. Hard core. I had no energy! Nada...coffee, didn't work. Food didn't work, a nap didn't work. The boyfriend called me and I was completely out of it. I'm moving a bit now. Going to finish my rambling here and start packing. Suppose to be high 70's to low 80's in Norfolk this week. Should be beautiful! And I can SLEEP!! YIPPEEE!

About Me

I'm an adopted Montana native currently working as a physician assistant for the Department of Defense in Alaska. It's not Montana but it is better than SE Minnesota. My cats Reggie, Romeo, and Montana as well as Ruby, my chocolate lab, keep me entertained. I'm on a whole new adventure!